Fair use or fair dealing is the concept that unlicenced copyrighted work can be legally used without paying licencing fees or recieving permission of the copyright holder (see Wikipedia's article on fair use).

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Fair use is explicitly prohibited on Wikisource, since Wikisource's license allows use or distribution in circumstances where fair use is invalid (such as commercial exploitation).

Furthermore, as described by the Amount and substantiality clause, reproducing whole works is not fair use. See the legal precedent set in Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises (1985); as stated by Wikipedia's article on the subject, the US Supreme Court "determined that fair use is not a defense to the appropriation of work by a famous political figure simply because of the public interest in learning of that political figure's account of an historic event." Further, "the use of less than 400 words from President Ford's memoir by a political opinion magazine was interpreted as infringement because those few words represented "the heart of the book" and were, as such, substantial."

Non-commercial criteria limit or disallow the use or distribution of a work for commercial purposes or contexts. These criteria usually make no distinction between profit-making and non-profit fundraising.

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Although Wikisource itself does not make commercial use of works, its license does allow redistributors to make such commercial use. For example, this makes it possible to distribute Wikisource content as part of a free operating system mailed on low-cost DVDs. Therefore, works with non-commercial licenses are prohibited on Wikisource.

An orphaned work is one whose copyright exists or may exist, but whose copyright holder is difficult or impossible to contact.

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Orphaned works are prohibited on Wikisource, which seeks to build a free content library. Although the copyrighted works may be freely exploited for the time being or in limited situations, the rights have nonetheless not granted and the works are not free.

Presumed licensing refers to works whose licenses are unknown but are likely to be a compatible license or criteria.

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These are generally prohibited. However, some very limited conditions have been permitted by the community, most notably regarding public speeches. No works should be added to Wikisource under a presumed license or condition except for scenarios explicitly permitted by the Wikisource community, start a discussion at Wikisource:Possible copyright violations before posting works:

An unscheduled or impromptu speech would by its nature not allow for a written foundation, so would not be covered by US copyright laws, hence would be PD and could be hosted on WS.

Manifestos or open letters that are not explicitly or implicitly copyrighted and are intended for widespread distribution.Template:PD-manifesto was deleted.

Unenforceable copyright is a copyright that is otherwise valid in the United States but cannot be enforced due to specific circumstances, such as an application of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (which makes all commerce with an enemy state or organisation illegal).

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Unenforceable copyright is prohibited on Wikisource, which seeks to build a free content library. Although the copyrighted works may be freely exploited for the time being or in limited situations, the rights have nonetheless not been granted and the works are prohibited.

The Project Gutenberg License (PGL) applies to ebooks and other works that use or contain the Project Gutenberg trademark. The PGL is non-derivative and therefore such works are prohibited as described above. A public domain work published as a Project Gutenberg ebook cannot be hosted as such, but if the PGL and all other mention of Project Gutenberg are removed then the PGL no longer applies and the public domain work may be hosted here.